


Writing Fodder

by BlueMoonHound



Series: Lucretia [5]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Memory Loss, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, Minor Character Death, Mutilation, Torture, Wonderland, mentions of the IPRE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 18:18:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13059495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueMoonHound/pseuds/BlueMoonHound
Summary: It's a simple phenomenon that's chased her her whole life-- since she was ten, and broke her foot, and reveled in the feeling of breaking a bone because it was such good writing fodder. She remembers running fingers along the partially healed bone, a single spell almost enough to put their family in debt. She remembers writing about their debt, about selling her works for the first time at age twelve, trying to earn her parents an extra dollar in whatever way she can.





	Writing Fodder

**Author's Note:**

> Partly based on my own experiences with traumatic events as a young writer, and how it followed me into adulthood.   
> I have very bad memory problems, and I wanted to explore the possibility in Lucretia. 
> 
> (I know-- Tuna, another 1000-odd word one-shot?? what???????)

“It doesn't grow back, does it?” Lydia teases.

“No, it grows back fairly fast,” Lucretia says. She's not sure where she gets that idea. Her hair doesn't grow that fast, it took a few years to regain half the length that the bond engine could give her in moments. She's so used to the bond engine, she supposes, that she never questioned that. It grows fast, the same way Taako's shortens up against his will every year, Merle's beard goes back to the same length as when they left, Davenport's ponytail vanishes( _gods, Davenport, Forgive me_ ) – “You want to take my hair. Then take my hair.”

Nothing they can do in here can hurt her more than she's already hurt herself.

(That's a lie. But, well, Lucretia is a writer.)

It's a simple phenomenon that's chased her her whole life-- since she was ten, and broke her foot, and reveled in the feeling of breaking a bone because it was such good writing fodder. She remembers running fingers along the partially healed bone, a single spell almost enough to put their family in debt. She remembers writing about their debt, about selling her works for the first time at age twelve, trying to earn her parents an extra dollar in whatever way she can. (Being okay with selling eggs on the street, because she can _write_ about that. She's done it.) And the most frustrating thing for Lucretia became not suffering, not change, but forgetting.

Forgetting is Lucretia's greatest fear.

(She figured out very fast that the litches cannot read minds.)

And so, as Edward's long, slender fingers run their way through her hair, as the feeling of the razor scrapes its way along her scalp, Lucretia does not flinch. Does not show any sign of emotion whatsoever. Cam folds his arms, looking worried, but Lucretia makes no sign. (She hasn't lost much here-- three broken fingers, worthless loss. Spell slots. She has a gash along her forehead that will surely scar. Bruised knees.) The best thing she's gotten out of Wonderland so far is Wonderland itself. And oh man, is Wonderland writing fodder. It was the best writing fodder she's found in years.

So when the litch elves ask to take her handedness, she refuses. She doesn't want to lose that. She doesn't want to forget what it feels like to write with both of her hands, both of her hands at once, just, any of that. She says no.

“Well then,” says Lydia, appearing before her in wisps of darkness. “I guess we'll have to wager something else away, then, won't we?”

A chess game appears before them. This has happened before – Cam wagered away his left hand in a game of chess, because he refused to let them take his eyesight. (they sawed it off, and Lucretia watched. She watched as he bled on the floor. As he screamed and cried with pain. When Edward cauterized the wound with a flat, red-hot piece of metal.) The trick is, the litches always win. Always. Whatever you choose to wager away, you have to be ready to lose it.

“Alright,” Lucretia says, sitting down next to the white pieces.

“White, hmm? Well, I suppose this is rather backwards.”

“Excuse me? White and blue have always been my colors.”

Lydia smiles, showing a handful of sharp teeth. She's a moon elf, her skin blue and pearlescent. Her outfit changes, and suddenly she's wearing a black leather bodysuit. “I don't know about that. You're not exactly… Pure.”

“Neither are you,” Lucretia replies, calm.

Lucretia moves the first piece. (The white pieces are the exact same color as her hair.)

“Woah, woah, woah! What are you wagering, Dear?” Lydia sits down across from her.

“Five years of my life.”

Lydia tuts. “That won't do. That won't do at _all_.”

“Ten years.”

“Hmm. Double or nothing?”

Lucretia stares right into Lydia's blue and gold eyes. “Double or nothing.”

Cam makes a little noise.

Lucretia doesn't care. She'd like to know, at this point, what it feels like to actually age, goddammit. She hasn't aged more than a few years for a hundred _times_ that time. She wants to be able to write about getting older. She wants to know what it's like, so, in this little kingdom of suffering, she's willing to give that up.

She loses the game.

(Of course.)

It seems fine, for a moment-- she's in her forties, now. Nothing too dramatic. Lucretia reaches for the bulwark staff, and finds that her legs are stiffer than she's used to. She's going to have to work to regain some of her dexterity.

Cam grabs her arm. “Are you alright?”

“I'm fine,” she says. Her voice is rougher, slipping back into – something. It reminds her of the time she cut her own hair, after _that_ cycle, and she can almost feel Edward's fingers on her skull again, sending little white curls to the floor. (Merle, coming into her room. Little white curls on the floor.)

They keep asking for memories.

She gives up a few toes. They break her kneecap. She can't walk right anymore.

They keep asking for memories, and finally she says yes.

It's too much. Lucretia hiccups, prods at the spot in her brain where her mother's face used to be. It was right there. She remembers selling eggs on the street. She remembers selling newspapers, writing obituaries. Age fourteen, well known obituary writer. A girl in charge of death. Lucretia. Remember Lucretia? She ran around the streets talking to the loved ones of the deceased, giving them little public eulogies. She earned cents to the gold piece at that job but she did it anyway. One time I saw her at the market, she was buying bread. She looked so weak, like she hadn't eaten or slept in days. She hurried off. People kept thinking, when will Lucretia join that list of the dead? But Lucretia vanished on her fifteenth birthday, vanished and never returned.

Next time they heard of Lucretia, she was travelling out into the stars, with six other folks of various races. She was older, more experienced. She looked healthy and tired. She wasn't a little girl on the streets anymore. She was a ghost.

When she's given the chance, she forsakes Cam and runs.

 

She's shaky and frightened, running through the felicity wilds. She's cast a barrier around herself, impenetrable, 100 years of power and abjuration magic catching up to her and guarding her at her command. She feels disgusting. Does she have any pictures of her mother? Any sketches of her face? (If she does, she can never remember them. Never look at them. Never comprehend them, because that's gone. It's permanent.) She trembles, her shield shuddering around her. She steels herself. None of that now. She needs to survive, or one lost memory will mean _nothing_.

She works her way free of the felicity wilds in a couple of days and collapses at the far end against a tree, panting.

_It was one memory,_ she thinks. _Nothing compared to what you did to the others._

_Oh gods, the others._ Her crewmates, her family, her friends. She knows what it feels like, now. She never had before.

She knows what it feels like -

Oh.

_You had wanted that, hadn't you, Lucy? You'd wanted to know what it feels like to have a memory ripped from your mind. You'd been curious. Now you know. How does it feel? Are you happy?_

Lucretia pulls out a journal, and she writes.

She titles the entry ' _forgetting_.'

She crosses it out, retitles it ' _wonderland_.' crosses it out again.

It's just writing fodder.

**Author's Note:**

> I _have_ to write some pale ass Lucretia fluff one of these days, to make up for all this.


End file.
